Re: SQL Implementation

>> PL/I?: God, no! <<

It compiled to over three times the size of a COBOL program to do the same job, and ALWAYS ran. Never mind that you wanted it to stop. The automatic type conversions could suddenly give you a payroll with complex numbers instead of a warning.

>> Algol-68? with pleasure <<

No, no, no. Algol-60 was a pleasure. Algol-65 was a clean up. Algol-68 was so complex that there were only three compilers for it (one was the Royal Radar guys in teh UK and I don't remember the other two -- colleges, I think). I still have the specs for it; I still cannot understand the meta-meta-language they invented.

>> ADA? it's still alive and kicking <<

Nope. The Ada mandate was killed on 1998 Oct 01. I was with AIRMICS when ADA was created and had to write code in it without a compiler. The thing was awful and the first compilers took a year longer than planned because of the complexity. As InfoTech put it, there was no way to build a kernel then add to it to get a full language compiler -- you had to create the entire language all at once. A New York University built a compiler in SETL which had one error message and we played with that.

What we actually did with Ada was write a C or Forth program then drop it into an Ada shell to get real-time systems to work. Received on Fri Oct 03 2003 - 13:46:55 CDT